Intel D54250WYKH Haswell NUC Kit with 2.5" Drive Slot Mini-Review
by Ganesh T S on May 18, 2014 10:15 AM ESTPerformance Metrics - II
In this section, we mainly look at benchmark modes in programs used on a day-to-day basis, i.e, application performance and not synthetic workloads.
x264 Benchmark
First off, we have some video encoding benchmarks courtesy of x264 HD Benchmark v5.0.
7-Zip
7-Zip is a very effective and efficient compression program, often beating out OpenCL accelerated commercial programs in benchmarks even while using just the CPU power. 7-Zip has a benchmarking program that provides tons of details regarding the underlying CPU's efficiency. In this subsection, we are interested in the compression and decompression MIPS ratings when utilizing all the available threads.
TrueCrypt
As businesses (and even home consumers) become more security conscious, the importance of encryption can't be overstated. CPUs supporting the AES-NI instruction for accelerating the encryption and decryption processes have, till now, been the higher end SKUs. However, with Bay Trail, even the lowly Atom series has gained support for AES-NI. The i5-4250U in the Core-ML320 has AES-NI support. TrueCrypt is a popular open-source disk encryption program which can take advantage of the AES-NI capabilities. The TrueCrypt internal benchmark provides some interesting cryptography-related numbers to ponder. In the graph below, we can get an idea of how fast a TrueCrypt volume would behave in the Core-ML320 and how it would compare with other select PCs. This is a purely CPU feature / clock speed based test. So, we don't expect any difference between the D54250WYK and D54250WYKH in this benchmark.
Agisoft Photoscan
Agisoft PhotoScan is a commercial program that converts 2D images into 3D point maps, meshes and textures. The program designers sent us a command line version in order to evaluate the efficiency of various systems that go under our review scanner. The command line version has two benchmark modes, one using the CPU and the other using both the CPU and GPU (via OpenCL). The benchmark takes around 50 photographs and does four stages of computation:
- Stage 1: Align Photographs
- Stage 2: Build Point Cloud (capable of OpenCL acceleration)
- Stage 3: Build Mesh
- Stage 4: Build Textures
We record the time taken for each stage. Since various elements of the software are single threaded, others multithreaded, and some use GPUs, it is interesting to record the effects of CPU generations, speeds, number of cores, DRAM parameters and the GPU using this software.
Dolphin Emulator
Wrapping up our application benchmark numbers is the Dolphin Emulator benchmark mode results.
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AgeOfPanic - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
I use a Haswell core i3 version of the Gigabyte Brix with a OCZ Vertex SSD and I really like the system. Great form factor and mounting it behind the monitor makes for a very clean system. I don't think I'll go back to a different form factor for normal desktop systems again.To reply to the issue with the Intel AC760. I replaced the standard wifi card in the Brix for a Intel AC760 version. I use the standard drivers from Windows 8.1. I cannot reliably connect to the 5 GHz network of my Asus AC66u router. It works OK on the 2.4 GHz band, but I'm a little disappointed in this. Seems the drivers definitely need to mature.
Laststop311 - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
This nuc is only good if u want to turn your dumb tv into a smart tv that's smarter than all tv's with built in smart functionalities. Gaming on ULV graphics = boooooooo. If you want to game in this tiny form factor you should get an amd apu. 5000 blowsdblagent - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Quick question that I assume I already know the answer to, these will support dual video output correct? I assume they will, and if so then I could see moving my entire office over to these in the future. I just built 40 desktops and building these would be a world easier.They all have Samsung SSDs so this new 2.5 form factor support will be a savior, though I'm set for several years now. Maybe as I get some more users I will build these over my custom built solution. Would save me some grey hair!
ptmmac - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Am I the only person who would like to see a single slot Pci for the 750 ti from nvidia in something this size?. I realize it would increase the power envelope, but it would also make gaming practical. AMD is supposedly working on a competitor for the 750 ti and this would give the purchaser a better set of options.run - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
The hard disk is where the operating system and all software applications are stored. Because of this, a properly working drive is essential in the operation of any computer or laptop.CSMR - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
Questions:1. How well damped is the 2.5" hard drive cage? I think this is mainly for regular HDDs (since you get mSATA for SDDs) so I am interested in how noisy HDDs are in this case.
2. The TrueCrypt benchmark doesn't look so good. Does this suggest that with native Windows whole-drive encryption, that encryption will limit read/write speed? I would have expected with AES-NI to get hardware encryption and decryption at closer to the SATA limit of 6Gbps.
darckhart - Tuesday, May 20, 2014 - link
ganesh, have you tried installing windows 8 via uefi msata gpt on this intel nuc? i updated the nuc bios to 25, but the msata (crucial m550 256gb) is still undetectable via uefi. shows up just fine in legacy bios. wondering if this is a nuc issue.prophet001 - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
It was a mission to find out what NUC stood for. Might want to include that in the future.:)
kaymack - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
This article seems to imply that the D54250WYKH model has only the 2.5" drive bay available for storage and no MSATA slot. Based on info I've seen elsewhere, I was under the impression that the D54250WYKH model will accept an MSATA drive on the board AND a 2.5" drive in the bay...so one could have say a Crucial M550 MSATA as the boot drive for OS and programs and also contain a 2.5" HDD or SSD for additional storage of data, music, video, etc. Can anyone confirm this?Jas448 - Saturday, May 31, 2014 - link
I have installed windows 8.1 to a Crucial 240 M500 msata and using a sanDisk SSD250Gb as a 2nd drive in the 2.5 inch bay. No problems at all. The only problem I had was Windows would not install from a USB3 flashdrive but would from a USB2 Flashdrive